Holding up to 1000 patients at any one time the, the Ararat institution originally known as the 'Ararat Lunatic Asylum' was operational for more than a century.

Construction began in 1860 when the government decided to build three sister asylums across the state to accommodate Victoria's 'lunatics'.

However, inside you could've found people with a range of mental illnesses, learning disabilities and even conditions such as epilepsy and autism.

The institution was designed as a mini-town; with gardens, a dairy, piggery, chapel, fire station, workshops, cafeteria, hospital and morgue.

A post-mortem was to be carried out on all non-voluntary patients who died in Aradale.

With an elegant facade and a front entrance surrounded by trees and a fountain, Aradale didn't look too intimidating from the outside.

The surrounding wall - lined with palm trees that could be seen from the outside - doesn't appear to be very high.

But from the inside, the ground slopes down to the bottom of the enclosing wall, creating trenches which add an extra couple of metres height.

When J Ward closed in 1991, some of the 'criminally insane' patients moved across to Aradale, where they were housed in the 'forensic unit'.

Aradale's nurse educator John Mason says some patients came to the hospitals with relatives, but some came with police.

"You could imagine what was going through their heads coming to this hospital, there had been a lot of stories about Aradale."

Patients would've drove up the long -somewhat picturesque - driveway, to the enquiries office and then been taken to the appropriate ward, with men in one half of the building and women in the other.

Some wards of patients were allowed a considerable amount of independence and were able to come and go within the confines freely.

Those patients who were more unpredictable were housed in wards which were locked at all times.

Working at Aradale

George Dunkling was a nurse at both J Ward and Aradale for almost 20 years.

"I worked most of the time at Aradale, trained at the Aradale school of nursing."

He says he preferred working at J Ward.

"Possibly at J Ward because your patients were pretty much there for mainly long-term, so you got used to who you were dealing with.

"If you were at Aradale sometimes you swapped from ward to ward, which meant you had to get used to your different patients on a daily basis or a monthly basis."

When asked what it's like to walk through the quiet, desolate grounds now, he says he doesn't think about it too much.

"It's a place to come for a job, a permanent job through those days.

"You could've had three generations of staff working in this hospital."

The staff had a two-day-on two-day-off roster, starting at 7am and finishing at 7.40pm at night.

He says it was best not to get too attached to particularly patients.

"I think the best thing in a mental hospital, is not to take work home with you at night.

"Particularly at J Ward, if you got involved personally with patients here, I think you might've got yourself in trouble."

Closing Aradale

In November 2007, a Department of Human Services press release talks about the final decommissioning of Aradale.

It quotes Rob Knowles, the Health and Aged Care minister at the time:

"Over the past few years it was an ongoing problem trying to recruit skilled and experienced staff to move to Ararat to work with such a challenging group of clients.

"The most appropriate course of action will be to finalise the decommissioning of Aradale and transfer the clients to Melbourne, where there is a pool of experience both in nursing and clinical staff."

Mr Knowles commended the nurses who had worked there over the decades.

"However, hospitals such as Aradale were subject to the policies of deinstitutionalisation and reforms to mental health services over the past decade.

"These policies have seen the move away from large stand-alone institutions and the transfer of clients either to community-based living or to small specialist facilities."